Rosenberg, Otto 1927-2001

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ROSENBERG, Otto 1927-2001

PERSONAL: Born April 28, 1927, in East Prussia; died July 4, 2001, in Berlin, Germany; married twice; children: (second marriage) seven.

CAREER: Writer and activist. Founder, Sinti Union of Berlin and Organization for German Sinti and Roma.

WRITINGS:

(With Ulrich Enzensberger) A Gypsy in Auschwitz, London House (London, England), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Otto Rosenberg was born a Sinto Gypsy in East Prussia in 1927, and was raised by his grandparents when his parents separated. With about ten other families, he and his grandmother lived in a convoy of horse-drawn caravans, selling handcrafts and telling fortunes, until 1936, when the Sinti and Roma Gypsies were rounded up and forced to settle in Marzahn, a small area outside Berlin. Almost a thousand Gypsies were kept at Marzahn by the German authorities, who wanted to keep them out of sight during the 1936 Olympics.

Rosenberg attended a small school in the Marzahn camp, and learned about Roman Catholicism from a priest who visited the camp. He later said this faith helped him during the ordeals he would soon endure at the hands of the Nazis. Rosenberg also met anthropologist Robert Ritter and his assistant, Eva Justin, whom he liked because they often fed him. In 1938, most of the men in the camp were sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In 1943, when Rosenberg was fifteen, he and other Gypsies, including his grandmother, were taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where they were beaten, starved, and where many of them were murdered and cremated in huge ovens.

While at Auschwitz, Rosenberg met the infamous Josef Mengele, a physician who used the inmates of the camp as subjects in horrific experiments. Rosenberg noted that Mengele, despite his evil deeds, had a pleasant demeanor, often laughing, and Rosenberg found it hard to hate him even though he knew what Mengele was doing.

In 1944 Rosenberg and other prisoners considered strong enough to work were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Rosenberg's grandmother, left behind, was murdered by the Nazis. Rosenberg was subsequently moved to Camp Dora and then to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Russian soldiers liberated the prisoners in 1945. After six years of slavery, Rosenberg went to Berlin to find work and claim the small sum that the government was providing for survivors of the Holocaust. However, explained the author of a London Times obituary, the authorities told him, "You are not a Berliner....Youarea Gypsy, a wanderer," and refused to give him any reparations. Rosenberg, in response, started associations for Gypsy people and became an activist on their behalf, asking for war reparations for them.

In the 1970s, Rosenberg founded the Sinti Union of Berlin as well as the Organization for German Sinti and Roma. He spoke at schools, youth groups, and universities about his experiences during the war. According to Eric Pace in his New York Times obituary, Rosenberg once said, "I was very young and healthy, and always fit for work. I was probably very lucky, and protected by God. The weaker ones died in the hospital or were beaten to death with guns."

Rosenberg retained the prisoner identity number that had been tattooed on his arm by the Nazis for the remainder of his life. He did not have it removed, but instead had an angel tattooed over it as a symbol of good triumphing over evil. According to a Chicago Tribune obituary writer, the journal History Today praised Rosenberg's autobiography as "a haunting account of the author's life."